No One Knows Us Here(86)

I understood, then, what I was doing: preparing food for them to eat after I was gone. As if I would walk out of here, disappear, and they’d still be here, in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, together. It didn’t make sense, but I liked to imagine it anyway. I liked to imagine that future for them.

When I was done, I slipped into the twin bed next to Wendy’s. I couldn’t get warm. Under the weight of blankets, all loose on top of me, nothing tucked in around me.

This time I dreamed of Leo. Lying on the bed, I could feel him, feel his fingers inside of me, the pinch of the tweezers. I felt something emerge from my body, like I was giving birth, and then I was empty and Leo was saying, Look, Rosemary. Look what I found in there. I looked up, and there he was, his dark, curly hair and pale-blue eyes with the pupils big and black as beetles. With the tweezers he was pinching the tiny legs of a bird, a brown bird with wet feathers and frightened, flapping wings. He closed both hands over the bird, and the bird disappeared into his cupped hands, but they weren’t Leo’s hands anymore. They weren’t Leo’s eyes. They were Jason’s. You’ve killed him now, Jason said. You’ve killed him with your human scent.

I bolted upright. “No!” I yelled.

“Shh. It’s okay. It was just a dream.” Wendy bent over me, picking up blankets off the floor. She flapped them out over me, piling them back on, one by one. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered, and I wrapped my arms around her, forcing her to climb in under the covers with me.

I felt her body stiffen and then relax. She put her arms around me, too. We hadn’t nestled together like that since she was very young, maybe four or five years old, when she was the one waking up from a nightmare and I would be the one to straighten her covers and shush her back to sleep. Her body was so slight, slighter than it should be. I could feel the ridges of her ribs on her back.

I waited until her eyes drifted closed and her breathing slowed, and then I slipped out of her arms, out of the bed. She looked different lying there. So small, no makeup on. She reminded me of the little girl she had been. For the thousandth time since that trip to France, I tugged at the ring on my left hand. This time it came off—slipped right off my finger. Carefully, I placed it on Wendy’s hand. It fit on her index finger. The huge diamond on her frail little hand struck me as one of the saddest sights I’d ever seen. I pulled the blankets up higher, covering her hand with the edge of the sheet.



The air outside was cold, like it wasn’t springtime here, not yet. Patches of old snow still remained on the ground, over webs of grayed leaves and pine needles. The sky was just beginning to glow with light. The kind of morning that was so beautiful and perfect, it made me question why I slept through most of them. I should have risen before the sun every day and looked out at the sky, but I didn’t. I’d just slept right through everything.

Only one road led out, twisting west through low hills. I followed it to the highway.





CHAPTER 29


During the entire bus ride back to Portland, I kept expecting to get pulled over by a fleet of police cars with sirens and megaphones. They would demand the bus pull to the side of the road, and then they’d storm on board, yank me out of my seat, and arrest me on the spot for the murder of Leo Glass.

I thought they would be waiting for me when the bus pulled into the downtown station, but I got off the bus with everyone else and walked out into a bright spring day. Trees swayed overhead, their leaves new and bright green. The sky was blue, spackled with fluffy white clouds that billowed into shapes that looked like animals. Like a poodle chasing a T. rex. Birds chirped. A man in filthy pajama pants pushing a shopping cart asked me for spare change. I gave him a dollar and kept walking. No one stopped me.

Life was going on as if nothing had happened. Sunshine felt warm on my skin. I lifted my face up to the sky and breathed.



“I want to confess to a crime,” I announced to the woman sitting behind a desk at the downtown police station.

She was on the phone, listening intently and nodding her head.

“I want to confess to a crime.” I made my voice strong, so the woman would pay attention, so everyone would pay attention. The police in the back rooms would hear it. I wanted everyone to know. “I killed Leo Glass.”



I sat in an interrogation room for hours before anyone came by to question me. Finally a man came in and settled himself into the chair across from me. Sanders was his name, according to his badge. Middle-aged guy, soft around the middle. He didn’t look like the city’s top homicide detective or anything, but what did I know. I wanted someone more handsome, someone with hard edges and expressive eyebrows, someone who would reduce me to tears with one scathing look.

He handed me a candy bar. “You must be hungry, sitting in here all day. Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

I stared at him reproachfully. Like he was wasting my time.

He sat across from me and took out a notebook. “So what brings you here today?” he asked. He pointed to his own face, frowning. “Those are some pretty nasty bruises you got there.”

If this was an interrogation strategy, I didn’t understand it. “I came here to confess.” I was annoyed. I’d walked into the police station and told them I’d committed felony murder, and no one was doing anything about it.

“All right then,” he said. Poised a pencil on the notepad, eyebrows raised.